Highland communities are in line to benefit from a share of more than £650,000 in the latest distribution of awards by a partnership windfarm fund.
The Beatrice Partnership Fund was launched in association with SSE Renewables Beatrice offshore wind farm – located around eight miles off the coast of Caithness – to help support local projects providing opportunities and empowering their local community.
Now in its third year, the fund has awarded £405, 507.91 to 11 projects across the north this year, including a total of £100,000 in grants for slipway repairs to help safeguard the historic Cromarty-Nigg Ferry.
Homestart Caithness also received £23,357 to deliver a parenting programme to support fathers currently in criminal justice system.
Sarah Medcraf, Beatrice Panel Member, said: “We live in a society where everyone is always busy, so it’s easy to lose sight of the little things. But to many the little things are very important to their lives. Beatrice enables communities to be empowered and deliver on the ground what matters to them the most. No one knows a community like its own residents and we take pleasure in learning about them and fulfilment in watching their aims come to fruition with the support of Beatrice.”
This announcement came the day after HRH Prince Charles, The Duke of Rothsay proclaimed the offshore wind farm officially open, becoming the largest facility of its kind in Scotland and the fourth largest across the globe.
The 84-turbine wind farm worth £2.6 billion is providing vital resources to east coast communities of Caithness and Sutherland
The five year fund worth £3m will run for the next two years, distributing the remaining awards available from the Highlands £2m fund.
Morven Smith, Head of Community Investment for SSE Renewables, said: “Beatrice is such an amazing project, the size and scale of which has never really been seen before in Scotland, and we are so glad that, through this fund we have been able to share some of the benefits of the wind farm.
“Every year we are blown away by the innovative applications to the fund, they offer communities a chance to help grow sustainably and help bring much needed investment in these amazing rural communities. We look forward to hearing how each project progresses.”
The Beatrice Partnership fund will open again in January 2020.
